Wrangler Dani

(This was originally published on my Substack newsletter. Subscribe here.)

Although it’s Christmastime, our weather right now is not very festive. It feels like drought, like dry river beds and still irrigation lines. It makes me think of famine, the ravenous cows in Pharaoh’s dream in Genesis. Speaking of the dream, isn’t it true that famine always eats up plenty, just as bad times eternally overshadow good ones? Is that our perverse human nature, our unwillingness to rejoice in blessings, or is it because we are so very mortal and frail and affected by every little thing?

I need a new vehicle, and last night I cried giant tears over the choices I have. I always imagined driving some big mama vehicle, something fitting for my large passel of delightfully raucous kids. It feels foolish to buy a big brood-hauler for our comparatively small family. I miss my little Tacoma and the freedom of a five-speed pick-up and I miss the dream of a big family and a big car. All of this comes down on me with the weight of unmet desires and the knowledge that I have two beautiful children who are the greatest gift to me and why am I crying about a car? My brain tells me to get a grip and my soul sags under the weight of wishing and my heart still manages to be grateful and see the life I am so blessed to live as I yearn for more. Just typing that out makes me want a drink, I can only imagine how you feel reading it, sorry about that.

I suppose it’s fitting to think about competing longings, blessings and dreams, in the season of Christmas, the time of festivals of lights in darkness, God becoming man.

I performed poorly yesterday – I rode a horse badly, I got frustrated, I am now wallowing in the reality of my limitations. Failure is part of the human experience, the whole reason for a Savior, but it doesn’t make the reality of it any less painful. I’d very much like to be better at my life, and the failure I feel crushing in on me like a 4:30 sunset makes my heart race and my face redden in shame. Like a land in drought, once my imperfection is revealed, I can’t recall the taste of success, the rainfall is never enough. Skinny cows devour the fat ones and still their ribs protrude, like an unhealthy ego they are never satisfied.

There’s a lot of talk about how hard the holidays are. A friend of mine said recently that she’s just waiting for them to be over, a sentiment which strikes me as familiar but horribly sad. I actually think the holidays are not really hard, anymore than life is hard. They merely awaken us; they bring into sharp relief all the ways our human experience is imperfect. It’s just easier to mask this truth the rest of the year. At times when drought and famine and broken relationships reign supreme, we live with these evils like inconvenient but not-awful roommates. But at Christmas, we remember what we were made for. We awake to how it could be, should be. I’m reminded that hope is as painful as it is necessary.

In hope, I am at war with indifference and insufficiency, shame and fear. Even though emaciated bovines stomp their way through my brain looking for plenty and warmth to devour, I refuse to simply hold on to my battered soul and try to last until January.

No, dear friends. Waiting for time to pass is not good enough. Waiting to feel better about my skills as a mother, human, horsewoman will not do; perfection is unreachable and anyway it leaves no room for grace or hope.

Rather, I string up lights and pour good wines and show up even though I know I will not be “good enough”, however that defines. The beauty of Christmas is not that all is made right immediately, but that light appears in darkness, that hope manifests.

Hope is here when I look stupid, when I fail, when I hesitate at the cross-roads, when I cry over the Craigslist ad of a perfectly suitable SUV. Hope is here when the litany of my embarrassment plays in my mind, when I don’t know where to turn or how to make sense of what comes next.

Hope sets the road ahead with lights. Hope is the thing with feathers, as Emily Dickinson wrote, the thing that flies above and sees the way forward even when we cannot. Hope believes in fat cows and snowpack, even when the skies refuse to relase their water and skinny cows are insatiable. This is hope – hope despite failure, hope that leans in to happiness, hope that dares to light candles and sing carols and live generously.